Leaders' Lesson: 'Don't Ever Mess Up A Snowstorm'

EditorialThe Hartford Courant

With snow and bitter cold on the way just hours after the new year began, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy swung into action, briefing the media and activating the state's severe-weather protocol to help shelter those in need.

In doing so, Mr. Malloy followed what might be the First Commandment of gubernatorial politics: Thou Shalt Not Mismanage a Storm.

This month, The Courant's 250th anniversary retrospective looks at our coverage of weather. As the stories indicate, weather is not only a meteorological phenomenon, but also a political one.

As long as snow removal and other services are working well, the storm is an opportunity to be — and be seen as — an effective leader. As long as the leader is, in fact, here.

Gov. Meskill

That was the unfortunate lesson learned by Republican Gov. Thomas Meskill. In December of 1973, Mr. Meskill took his family on a skiing trip to Vermont. No sooner had he arrived there than freezing rain began sticking hard to roads and power lines back home in Connecticut, the beginning of what quickly became the worst ice storm here in decades.

Though he was out of the state only briefly and issued the same orders by phone that he would have given in person, Mr. Meskill was pilloried for being absent while the state was inches deep in ice. The ice storm was one of the factors (the Republican president was at that time also in a bit of a pickle) that made Mr. Meskill — a competent and hard-working governor — decide not to seek re-election in 1974.

Every governor since has had a finger in the wind and never ventured far from the emergency command center with snow on the way.

Mr. Meskill's successor, Ella Grasso, helped her chances immeasurably in an intra-party renomination fight with a public show of decisiveness in the blizzard of 1978. As The Courant's Jon Lender reported, she walked more than a mile down Hartford streets to direct emergency operations from the State Armory. "She closed the state's highways. Her fingers were on the buttons. Everyone knew she was in charge. She was renominated and re-elected easily."

As Gov. John G. Rowland told a group of visitors to his office in the late 1990s, "You can screw up the budget, but don't ever mess up a snowstorm." Mr. Rowland's critics charged that he never read a budget, but he also never had a Bucknerian moment with a snowstorm or hurricane.

No governor has since 1973, though U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro risked a political backlash by staying on vacation on Italy's Amalfi Coast after Tropical Storm Irene slammed into her Connecticut district in 2011. Some called it her "Meskill mistake," though she appears to have survived it.

Small State

Why is weather so political in Connecticut?

For one thing, it is a small state, which tends to magnify attention on the governor, especially in the age of instant communication. Also, people who are enduring a blizzard or other storm like to see the boss on the job, using the tools available to ameliorate the situation. Do it well and it pays off. Gov. Abraham Ribicoff's strong response to the Great Floods of 1955 — he was on the scene, called out the National Guard and later called a special session of the General Assembly — helped propel him to national prominence and a Cabinet post in Washington.

It may also have paid off for Mr. Meskill. He became a judge and later chief judge of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Though many criticized his appointment, he won them over by being an able and hard-working jurist. When he died in 2007, a fellow judge said in a eulogy that the ice storm was the best thing that ever happened to him.